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Japan Pension Service staff computers were improperly accessed
by an external email virus, leading to the leak of some 1.25
million cases of personal data, the system's president, Toichiro
Mizushima, told a hastily called news conference.
He apologized for the leak, which he said involved combinations
of names, identification numbers, birth dates and addresses.
The pension service was setting up a team to investigate the
cause and prevent a recurrence, Mizushima said.
"These are the people's vital pensions. I have instructed Health
and Welfare Minister (Yasuhisa) Shiozaki to consider the pension
recipients and do everything possible," Abe told reporters in
brief remarks aired on NHK public television, which featured the
data leak as the evening's top news story.
Separately, Shiozaki apologized for failing to prevent the
hacking and told a news conference he had instructed the Japan
Pension Service to set top priority on protecting the public's
pensions.
Public outrage over botched record-keeping that left millions of
pension premium payments unaccounted for was a major factor in a
devastating defeat suffered by Abe’s Liberal Democratic Party in
a 2007 election for parliament’s upper house.
Abe, whose first cabinet also lost several cabinet ministers to
other scandals and gaffes, including one who committed suicide,
resigned in September of that year in the face of parliamentary
deadlock and ill health.
(Writing by William Mallard and Linda Sieg; Editing by Robert
Birsel and Clarence Fernandez)
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